There was no handshake for the umpire. Just a resigned tightening of the lips and a look up to his wife Lucy in the players' box.

So close to glory, so far from the first Grand Slam final of his career.

The magical ride which had seen Tim Henman journey into unknown territory at the French Open ended with a 3-6 6-4 6-0 7-5 semi-final defeat by the brilliant Argentinian Guillermo Coria.

It was riveting - at times humiliating, at others thrilling - and in the end it might all have rested on one maverick call from French umpire Pascal Maria at the end of the second set.

Henman appeared to have served an ace, but Maria called it a let, even thought the let-call judge heard nothing. Coria went on to win the point, the game and the set amid a sequence of 13 winning games without reply which ripped the heart out of Henman's challenge.

While Henman gave the umpire a piece of his mind at the second set changeover, it only served to wreck the concentration of the British No 1, whose form at this tournament has been a revelation.

But if Henman was a loser then at least metaphorically he was carried out of Court Philippe Chatrier on his sword after a fourth set fightback which threatened to garner this extraordinary tournament with yet another unlikely flourish.

It was not to be and Henman summed it up succinctly as he scurried from the court.

''I started the match well, had a difficult period in the middle and had my chances at the end,'' he said. ''That's sport.''

So there is to be no first Briton in the French men's final since Bunny Austin in 1937 and no first British men's Grand Slam winner since Fred Perry in 1936.

But it would be wrong for Henman's final action here to be shrouded in controversy, even if the dodgy umpire's call did appear to upset his concentration.

Coria is more than a worthy adversary. Many believe he could be the best clay-court player the world has seen.

He has now won 48 of his last 50 matches on clay and his only defeat in 2004 has come at the hands of world No 1 and all-round tennis genius Roger Federer.

On top of that this past fortnight Henman had spent more than four hours longer than Coria on the cloying clay of Roland Garros, the Argentian not having dropped a set on his way to the semi-final.

You would never have guessed as much in the first set when Henman matched his younger opponent in every department.

The pair swapped service breaks in the third and fourth games but Henman was looking entirely at ease with the Coria armoury, attacking at all the right times, entirely comfortable with his own strategy.

The decisive break came in the eighth game, Henman eventually dispatching the game with a smash volley after which Coria slammed his racket into the ground and received a warning from the umpire for 'racket abuse'.

The Argentinian's frustration was obvious, as was the encouragement for Henman, who served out for the set while the French crowd chanted: ''Teem,Teem, Teem.''

Calm, composed, utterly focused. Henman was doing exactly what he had been attempting to do all tournament, playing tennis on his terms, proving that you do not have to stand ten feet behind the baseline to succeed on the game's slowest surface.

But could he sustain the pressure? Could he continue to dominate a man known as 'El Mago', the magician?

The answer was yes for much of the second set, in which Henman was an early break to the good, even at one point affording himself the luxury of a Samprasian smash, which he 'dunked' as you might bury a basket in basketball.

But the tide turned in the eighth game when Coria managed to break back courtesy of a wayward Henman volley.

When two games later the umpire called that 'let' on what appeared to be a perfectly good ace the set slipped away, along with Henman's good humour.

''Nobody else in the stadium heard it and you still think you're right?'' Henman asked umpire Pascal Maria at the changeover.

''Not a very good day for the umpire, is it? Just leave it to the guy whose job it is.''

The flash of temper was accompanied by the first hint of wildness in the Henman game. The forehands began to hit the tape. Too often they sailed wide of the lines. Worse still, the volleys at the net no longer punished as once they had.

It was almost as if all the steam worked up in a fortnight of hard work and emotion had blown the lid on Henman's concentration.

Whatever, the third set went by in a blur of Argentinian passing shots, drop shots and lobs to which Henman had no answer.

When Henman lost the first three games of the fourth set Coria had garnered 13 games without reply to wrest control.

It had broken Henman's game but not his character, because even then he launched the most thrilling of comebacks, breaking the Coria serve in the fifth game to the raucous approval of the French crowd.

When he did so again in the seventh game after a fierce exchange of drop shots at the net which is as close as tennis comes to hand-to-hand combat, he pumped the air with his fist.

But Coria, swift and fearless, broke Henman in the tenth game.

And so to the final game, Henman saving the first match point when Coria's forehand went long.

But then came the second and this time it was the Henman backhand slice which drifted long.

In the final Coria meets fellow Argentinian Gaston Gaudio.